Dear all, welcome to the fourth quarter 2024 sales presentation of Maisons du Monde. François-Melchior de Polignac, CEO, and Denis Lamoureux, CFO, will be your speakers today. I'll hand over to François-Melchior de Polignac. Sir.
Thank you, and welcome you all on this call. So we'll go through the usual agenda, and let me start without waiting further on the key highlights. So basically, moving from bottom to top, you will see, with no real surprise, that we are seeing quite a changing environment. As you know, level of consumption has been very slow recently. Level of saving has been very, very high. You probably all are aware of the fact that the real estate market, notably in France, has been quite poor and usually sustains the activity of the home sector. In particular, the launch of new constructions in France has reached now for about a year and a half nearly all-time low levels unprecedented since decades. And there has been this additional burden of the budgetary uncertainties in the recent months in France, and it's still not done.
So we believe, and we know, and we recognize that the environment has remained quite challenging and will keep a very high level of uncertainties for the months to come. In this context, you have seen now our sales, which we are down 9.5% on a comparable basis for the quarter, which takes us back to more or less the level of the year, slightly better than the overall level of the year, and certainly a very strong improvement compared to the quarter three that had been quite difficult. In this context, and I think those figures to some extent reflect where we stand and what we are doing, we remain more than ever committed to delivering the roadmap and milestones of the key Inspire Everyday transformation plan that we launched and shared with you not even a year ago. You all remember that it's an in-depth transformation.
Indeed, we are transforming the company from basement to roof in all its ways of thinking and of doing. As you remember, and that's the part on the top left here, it all starts with the customer. We have been and we keep on reconnecting with our customers and listening to what they want us to achieve and how they see us and what they expect from us. That remains our key inspiration to keep our actions in the right direction, which has, of course, resulted in the launch of several initiatives that deeply transform our commercial model. And in the last quarter, there has been significant milestones in this respect. As you know, notably the launch of a multi-program in France, but also the acceleration of innovations through our store network.
At the same time, and even more with this uncertain context we have been speaking about, we are also very, very aggressively adjusting our financial model, let's say it this way, with the two C's of cost and cash that you well remember alongside the key C of customer. So we are committed to keeping our roadmap. I will, of course, come back to what it delivers, and we believe that is the right way in this key and difficult element of the environment that I've been highlighting. Now, if we move on to the next page, you will see what has been happening commercially in the last quarter. Basically, the message on the store network is that you have two key elements to have in mind. We are keeping on with a pragmatic, progressive optimization of the store network.
You see no huge changes in terms of number of openings or closings. We are keeping this balanced, pragmatic approach by which we close stores that have little chance for recovery and we open new stores that have better chances. This is why you see this quiet evolution of the store network in total. The second key element, of course, is the increasing share of our stores under partnership, notably the affiliated stores. One key element that you have to have in mind here is that we met two key milestones, i.e., the first two openings of stores from our affiliates. Remember that affiliation for us is both a commercial initiative because we very much believe in the local commercial touch, even in our business and sector, and our affiliate partners do bring this to the table.
And of course, in terms of cash and financial model, it allows us to get the support of some partners to finance revamping of stores and indeed, with those two first openings, complete new openings of stores. Now, another key milestone on the next page that we have achieved in the last quarter was, let's say, the last but not least types of stores that we have been remodeling. We went and we shared that some months ago with two stores located in a very important, very strategic location for us, ccentre commercial, commercial centers. Why are such locations strategic to us? Well, because by definition, they have the challenge of high levels of rents that have a very high reward or a very large exposure to customer flows.
Both Nice Cap 3000 and Montpellier Polygone are commercial centers with a huge flow of customers where, by definition, we do have a commercial opportunity, but also an opportunity to make the brands resonate even more loudly and powerfully in such cities, which is why we came up with an approach for such locations, which clearly builds upon the findings that we had with the remainder of the network, i.e., trying to open up the visibility of the offer for customers and also to increase the agility and facility for the customer to go through their shopping experience. So we are leveraging the learnings of what we have been doing before, which were, of course, also insights from our customers, but adapting them to locations, of course, that present particular characteristics, and notably this huge customer flow.
I'm very happy to share with you that in both cases, we have been able so far to measure unquestionably an increase in traffic, meaning that our capacity to open up the space visible for the customers from the mall and to attract more of them into the stores has been a success, but also the transformation rate has been improving, showing that our efforts to showcase in a more easygoing way for the customers our offer have been also successful. So we are very happy with those two new malls of the revamping campaign of our stores, and we'll, of course, work upon this basis for the future. Now, moving on to the next page, we had spoken a lot about customers and reconnecting with our customers.
You can see here three pillars of that for Q4, and of course, again, that is proving a basis for what we want to achieve and roll out further in the future. We spoke about the catalogs many times with you because, as you may remember, it has been a quite clear request from our customers, and also I have to say from the store staff, to come back with the catalogs that make the incredible richness of the offer of Maisons du Monde readily available for our customers, not only online, but also with physical support. We had resumed with our catalogs, but at the beginning, making them available to customers only inside the store, and we made a further step last quarter by making those same catalogs available through distribution together with fashion and home decoration magazines across France, and we had a very big impact on that.
I have to tell you that the analysis on customers for those magazines after this operation has been quite successful in the sense that customers have been showing an eagerness to reconnect with the brand through this catalog made physically available to them, and again, customers with an interest in fashion and home decoration. Second big pillar is the loyalty program. We spoke about it a lot, but you have to know that both for our customers and also both for our store staff, it's been proving a very useful tool to reconnect and improve the links and relation with our customers. You may remember that in the feedback of our customers, there was a very clear eagerness to have the brand and the company value their attachment, emotional attachment, and links with Maisons du Monde.
It's something which for our French customers has been now met with good success and also improving frequency and size of the baskets for many customers, and of course, you also remember this last part on the right side that we shared with you our willingness to rebalance a little bit from nearly 100%, let's say, SEA marketing budgets to a more balanced approach by which we remain, of course, very visible on the web, which remains by definition a more visible showcase for our products, but yet again, to reconnect also offline, which is what we have been doing progressively in the last quarter in France as a test. We believe a lot in this reconnection with our clients. It is showing some positive signals. Of course, it will thus be a basis also for next year.
Having made this quick introduction, I will pass over to Denis, who will give you the financial review of the quarter.
Thank you very much, François-Melchior. As you can see on the page, we achieved 295.4 million EUR sales for the Q4, decreasing by 9.5% on a like-for-like basis. As you can also see, this turnover includes all the affiliate sales, for sure, but also the franchise sales we are doing with the franchise. This is better than the last quarter, and it is also to note that on a like-for-like basis, excluding renovation, because you remember that we have 63 stores that have been renovated, and some of them were only reopened at the very early stage of Q4. So we have an effect of - 7.2% if we are purely out of renovation. You can also see the ongoing transformation of our network because we increased strongly the number of affiliates. As you can see, there is one opening, which is O'Neill in Belgium.
There are two relocations, which are Barentin and Pau, what we call the BHL, meaning the concept for the stores. We have seven transfers to affiliates, and we have 13 closings in our own network, while in the affiliate, we have two openings, Cognac and Redon, and these stores are very important in the development of this affiliate store business model. On the franchise store, it is a temporary closing, and it should be reopened in 2025. Let's jump into more detail. If you look at this slide, you can see for sure that decoration is very high compared to what we have seen during the year, of course, because this is the quarter of Christmas, and Christmas holiday is very important for Maisons du Monde.
All in all, the furniture is doing a little bit better than decoration, and remember that decoration for that quarter is better than what we have known during the year. So a little bit of improvement with Christmas holiday. We can also see by channel that we are declining slightly the same compared to digital and stores. Even if on like-for-like for stores, we are a little bit better than that, and we have basically 66.2% on store and 23.9% online. From a geographic point of view, we have some pockets of strength in Italy and Spain, which are markets that are recovering, also because they have known the transformation of stores a little bit earlier than France.
At the end, while the international was a little bit lower than France for the first three quarters, at the end of 2024, France and international have the same kind of dynamic, declining by 11% around, but at least on the same path. If we look at the financial, of course, it is a sales meeting, but if we look at the main topic we are following and we are sharing with you. On the CapEx side, we were supposed to be on 3%, and we know that we will be a little bit below 3%, so we are on track on that topic. On working capital, we have also remembered that we are working on that, and we have reduced by almost one month our working capital. On cost saving, we had a target of EUR 45 million saving in 2024, and we achieved that.
At the end of that, it enabled us to generate a positive free cash flow in 2024, which was clearly the big target of that year. One said, I leave the floor to François-Melchior for 2025.
Next page, thank you. For 2025, you will have understood that we are not counting on a dynamic environment, clearly. If you can go back to the page, lovely, thank you. Clearly, what we are counting on is our action plans and the positive signals that we see from both of them. There is one point which is close to my heart and which is not commented too much so far is the NPS. In fact, we have been registering record levels of NPS and a steady growth of this NPS throughout 2025 compared to 2024, although here we're talking about the December figures. It's key to us because, to be quite honest, when you are going through an in-depth transformation of the organization, you could expect the NPS to take some time to grow or to recover because sometimes it can also go a little bit down.
So it's a very positive signal for us that all the elements we have been implementing, listening to customers and trying to reconnect with customers, have been seen and heard by our customers. So this is, of course, very encouraging for us. In terms of other positive signals, what we see from the loyalty program is also very promising in as much as this engagement of customers is bringing some increase in frequency and baskets. And of course, we have now tested renovation through all different kinds and typologies of stores that we have, which allow us now to make the best enlightened decisions in terms of the speed and magnitude of the rollout that we will go on with in 2025.
If I just give a little color on the bullet points that you have below, basically, you see on the left side rather that has to do with the commercial and brand initiatives. Basically, you understand that we will continue to leverage and reinforce the brand and its connection with its markets. We are also going to capitalize on our omnichannel strategy. You might have in mind that we changed the organization some months ago to bring together under one single commercial management, I would say, all our selling channels, and we see some potential improvements and synergies between the channels to become even more omnichannel than we used to be. And of course, the loyalty program is helping us in this respect as well.
We believe that we are improving as well the distinctiveness of our product offer, and I will illustrate it in a second, but it's not only about distinctiveness of the product offer. You have in mind that we have been optimizing a level of offer and assortment that we have deemed a little bit too complex, though inspiring by our customers. I'm also happy to share with you that this collection will see the beginning of a new category, which is the bathroom items. It's an important milestone for us because it's not only about optimizing the offer by making the existing categories more relevant and performant, but also by increasing our coverage of categories for which customers have expressed a distinctive goal and need, which is in that case, the bathroom items.
And of course, we will leverage further on the loyalty program to build the long-term engagement of our customers. I could, of course, detail a lot more on the commercial client side, and that's a key part of it, but you also have in mind at the same time on the right side the further work that we are doing on, let's say, the financial and cash efficiency. We have been proving in the last two years that we are able to optimize our merchandise treasury, and we'll keep on in this direction, of course. We are planning a lot of improvement in the supply chain as well. We also have announced recently, as you know, a reduction of our head office, which is an acceleration of the optimization of our organizations.
We count on that not only to master costs, but also to increase agility and simplicity of all our processes. Of course, it will be a milestone to digest in the coming months. We spoke about affiliation, of course. You have in mind the target that we set for the partnership share of our network, so we'll accelerate on affiliation and franchise moving forward in 2025. Again, as a kind of conclusion at this level, I would say that we don't count on the environment because it remains adverse, most likely in the coming months in Europe and notably in France, but we remain confident in our ability to recover momentum and achieve the growth and drive profitability because of the key action plans that have been launched and on the roadmap that we stick to.
Now, just to really conclude on some images rather than just on those comments and figures, you are all, of course, more than welcome to come to visit our showroom in the center of Paris. Please do not hesitate to ask for a guided tour. We'll be very happy to do that if you want to. Otherwise, just have a glimpse of the inspiration and variety of the offer that we are able to present our customers.
You can see here something which I believe is quite distinctive, which is the diversity of styles and inspirations that we are able to bring across different categories from the table accessories to the furniture and decoration, and from more classical styles to more urban and modern styles, and of course, indoor and outdoor, which is the diversity and variety of styles and inspiration for everybody that Maisons du Monde is all about. Thank you for listening to us, and we will just check now if there have been some written questions waiting for our answers.
Dear participants, if you would like to ask a question, please use the Q&A box available on the webcast link.
So we have some questions here. I'm not sure exactly which order they come, so I will take some of them as I see them. So some questions about the renovations, two questions at least about the renovations. So on the renovations, as I told you, we now have covered all the different types of stores that we have in terms of countries, square meters, type of clients around the stores, and so forth. And now what we see is the stores where we have the most positive and promising results and where there is the biggest impact. Good question about how do we want to accelerate and what is the plan looking forward.
So what we believe is that the most successful impact we can have and fastest impact is really on the commercial centers because, as I told you, results are very good, and it's locations where you see huge flows of customers. So that has a big impact in terms of brand promotion as well. So in the coming months, we will be focusing on such kinds of stores to begin with. That's for one. Second, we'll see that we can further improve the return on investment on the renovations. So we are now in the process of reviewing our list of potential remodel stores, and this is something we'll be able to share with you in a couple of months when we update our plan moving forward in terms of store renovations.
There was a question also linked to renovation, if I understand rightly, about the economic impact of such renovations. So what I would like to tell you on those ones, we're not going into too much detail, but have in mind that apart from the commercial center, that calls for a significant investment, but I'm calling it a significant investment, still only a few hundred K by store. Most other renovations have very limited budgets that are on average way below EUR 200,000 and very often way below EUR 50,000. So as you can imagine, the return on investment is not that difficult to reach, especially as at the same time we have a slight improvement, so slight reduction of the inventory value in such stores, and there is no need to increase the worked hours.
Indeed, the stronger visibility of customers for store associates and vice versa, and the simplicity of the merchandising could, to some extent, allow us to save some worked hours, but we decided to keep them for customer service. So the economic model goes together with the sales model for the store. And so whenever you get the level of upside of sales you want, it goes in parallel with the ROI and with the full profitability of the stores. So I will not give you today the rhythm of renovation for S1 and S2, and also because, as I mentioned before, we will have to digest the renewed organization at head office level. So we'll probably give a post to some extent to the teams that are many teams involved in the renovation programs also at head office level. Denis, if you want to take one.
Okay. Let's be on the other question. Basically, we have some financial. As you know, it's a sales element, and yet the figures are not yet audited or fully audited. Our auditors are working currently, so it's very difficult to provide exact figures on that. But in order to give you some color, yes, Q4 was a little bit H2, basically was with some pressure on promotion, and that's linked for sure with a hit in the gross margin linked to that, and it was a very high promotion model on that topic. On the underlying EBIT, either it is positive or not. Again, on that topic, it is not yet audited, and we could be either in a way or in the other way at the end.
So on that topic, I will not be able to answer you, but we will be very close to zero at the end, probably. Regarding the guidance, we are living in a challenging environment, worse than anticipated a year ago, clearly, notably as a result of lack of visibility and weakening consumer confidence. We have not stood still, and we are taking necessary action to adapt for cost structure to consolidate that guidance. So that's the situation. On the plan, we have announced some days ago, you have the number of jobs that are concerned, so 91.
You can imagine the cost of the global wages for these HQ people, that should be around EUR 70,000. So you can do the math in order to add that. As you have seen, on that topic, it's far from all the cost savings we are planning to do and that we have done.
So, remember that we have done EUR 45 million in 2024, and we will come back for sure in one month with the full visibility for 2025, but we are targeting huge savings that are far beyond that PSE. Regarding the better economics on stores, of course, we are targeting the better economics on stores, not only on top line, but also on productivity and profitability. For this one, again, we are finalizing the closing, and we will be able to share with you more in the coming months. We have some questions around the covenant.
So, globally, on the covenant, we have anticipated with our bank partner that has fully accepted to adapt the covenants. Again, the figures are not yet audited, but we should be very, very close to, not so far, I would say, from being free and clear around that topic and far behind the new covenant negotiated.
There is, yeah, Florent's question on the January sales trend, price environment, margin, potential pressure with Black Friday success, and I guess also looking forward. So as this is not the financial result, I will not be maybe as explicit as you'd like to be. Let's say the January more or less is in the same line as what we've been seeing so far. But on the more global question about the margin levels, let me share with you a couple of thoughts. First one, as you probably remember, we have been cleaning the assortment and inventories over the last now nearly 18 months. So this has brought us to make some specific investment, notably in 2023, but also some little bit of it in 2024.
Basically, we are shifting progressively, let's say, our margin and sales balance with less hardcore promotions and older inventory liquidation, which have been fueling the sales to some extent, but also weighing on the margin from late 2023 until in the end, nearly the sales period of 2025. At the same time, moving forward, a more balanced price offer with 3,000 price cuts, permanent price cuts that we went through last year, and also an increase in our offer of, let's say, the P1 or entry prices, so as to progressively go away from high promotion to less promotion, more balanced promotion, but with more balanced entry prices and prices from day one. You could see a mix of those dynamics into the evolution of our margin and expect to see it in the coming months as well.
I will just add one topic to what Denis was saying about the headquarters cost reduction. As Denis said, it's very important for us. It's not only about the number of headcounts that is going to be reduced, but we really want also to leverage this opportunity to reinforce the agility of the efficiency of our head office and thus to bring also a number of additional savings into the equation on top of the direct salaries of the people involved. I can see that there has been no further question in the last minutes or so. It did take us some time to answer all the flow of incoming questions. I guess we'll leave it another few seconds before wishing you a very good day.
All right. Thank you to all of you. Have a good day, and we are speaking again in just over a month anyway.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Welcome you all on this call. So we'll go through the usual agenda, and let me start without waiting further on the key highlights. So basically, moving from bottom to top, you will see, with no real surprise, that we are seeing quite a changing environment. As you know, the level of consumption has been very slow recently. The level of saving has been very, very high. You probably all are aware of the fact that the real estate market, notably in France, has been quite poor and usually sustains the activity of the home sector. In particular, the launch of construction, new constructions in France, has reached now for about a year and a half nearly all-time low level and certainly since decades.
There has been this additional burden of the budgetary uncertainties in the recent months in France, and it's still not done. We believe, and we know, and we recognize that the environment has remained quite challenging and will keep a very high level of uncertainties for the months to come. In this context, you have seen now our sales, which we are down 9.5% on a comparable basis for the quarter, which takes us back to more or less the level of the year, slightly better than the overall level of the year, and certainly a very strong improvement compared to the quarter three that had been quite difficult.
In this context, and I think those figures to some extent reflect where we stand and what we are doing, we remain more than ever committed to delivering the roadmap and milestones of the key Inspire Everyday Transformation Plan that we launched and shared with you not even a year ago. You all remember that it's an in-depth transformation. Indeed, we are transforming the company from basement to roof in all its ways of thinking and of doing. As you remember, and that's the part on the top left here, it all starts with the customer. We have been and we keep on reconnecting with our customers and listening to what they want us to achieve and how they see us and what they expect from us.
That remains our key inspiration to keep our actions in the right direction, which has, of course, resulted in the launch of several initiatives that deeply transform our commercial model and in the last quarter, there has been significant milestones in this respect. As you know, notably the launch of the loyalty program in France, but also the acceleration of innovations through our store network. At the same time, and even more with this uncertain context we have been speaking about, we are also very, very aggressively adjusting our financial model, let's say it this way, with the two C's of cost and cash that you well remember alongside the key C of customer so we are committed to keeping our roadmap.
I will, of course, come back to what it delivers, and we believe that it's the right way in this key and difficult elements of the environment that I've been highlighting. Now, if we move on to the next page, you will see what has been happening commercially in the last quarter. Basically, the message on the store network is that you have two key elements to have in mind. We are keeping on with pragmatic, progressive optimization of the store network. So you see no huge changes in terms of number of openings or closings. We are keeping this balanced, pragmatic approach by which we close stores that have little chance for recovery and we open new stores that have better chances. This is why you see this quiet evolution of the store network in total.
The second key element, of course, is the increasing share of our stores under partnership, notably the affiliated stores. One key element that you have to have in mind here is that we met with two key milestones, i.e., the first two openings of stores from our affiliates. Remember that affiliation for us is both a commercial initiative because we very much believe in the local commercial touch, even in our business and sector, and our affiliate partners do bring this to the table. Of course, in terms of cash and financial model, it allows us to get the support of some partners to finance revamping of stores and indeed, with those two first openings, complete new openings of stores.
Now, another key milestone on the next page that we have achieved in the last quarter was, let's say, the last but not least types of stores that we have been remodeling. We went and we shared that some months ago with two stores located in a very important, very strategic location for us, Centre Commercial, commercial centers. Why are such locations strategic to us? Well, because by definition, they have the challenge of high levels of rents that have the very high reward of the very large exposure to customer flows.
Both Nice Cap 3000 and Montpellier Polygone are commercial centers with a huge flow of customers, where by definition, we do have a commercial opportunity, but also an opportunity to make the brand resonate even more loudly and powerfully in such cities, which is why we came up with an approach for such locations, which clearly builds upon the findings that we had with the remodels of the network, i.e., trying to open up the visibility of the offer for customers and also to increase the agility and facility for the customer to go through their shopping experience. So we are leveraging the learnings of what we have been doing before, which were, of course, also insights from our customers, but adapting them to locations, of course, that present particular characteristics, and notably this huge customer flow.
I'm very happy to share with you that in both cases, we have been able so far to measure unquestionably an increase in traffic, meaning that our capacity to open up the space visible for the customers from the mall and to attract more of them into the stores has been a success, but also the transformation rate has been improving, showing that our efforts to showcase in a more easy-going way for the customers our offer have been also successful. So we are very happy with those two new phases of the revamping campaign of our stores, and we'll, of course, work upon this basis for the future. Now, moving on to the next page, we had spoken a lot about customers and reconnecting with our customers.
You can see here three pillars of that for Q4, and of course, again, that is proving a basis for what we will want to achieve and roll out further in the future. We spoke about the catalogs many times with you because, as you may remember, it has been a quite clear request from our customers, and also I have to say from the store staff, to come back with the catalogs that make the incredible richness of the offer of Maisons du Monde readily available for our customers, not only online, but also with physical support. We had resumed with our catalogs, but at the beginning, making them available to customers only inside the store.
And we made a further step last quarter by making those same catalogs available through distribution together with fashion and home decoration magazines across France, and we had a very big impact on that. I have to tell you that the analysis on customers for those magazines after this operation has been quite successful in the sense that customers have been showing an eagerness to reconnect with the brand through this catalog made physically available to them, and again, customers with an interest in fashion and home decoration. Second big pillar is the loyalty program. We spoke about it a lot, but you have to know that both for our customers and also both for our store staff, it's been proving a very useful tool to reconnect and improve the links and relations with our customers.
You may remember that in the feedback of our customers, there was a very clear eagerness to have the brand and the company value their attachment, emotional attachment, and links with Maisons du Monde. It's something which for our French customers has been now met with good success and also improving frequency and size of the baskets for many customers. And of course, you also remember this last part on the right side that we shared with you our willingness to rebalance a little bit from nearly 100%, let's say, SEA marketing budgets to a more balanced approach by which we remain, of course, very visible on the web, which remains by definition a more visible showcase for our products, but yet again, to reconnect also offline, which is what we have been doing progressively in the last quarter in France as a test.
We believe a lot in this reconnection with our clients. It is showing some positive signals. Of course, it will thus be a basis also for next year. Having made this quick introduction, I will pass over to Denis Lamoureux, who will give you the financial review of the quarter.
Thank you very much, François-Melchior de Polignac. As you can see on the page, we achieved EUR 295.4 million sales for the Q4, decreasing by 9.5% on the like-for-like basis. As you can also see, this turnover includes all the affiliate sales, for sure, but also the franchise sales we are doing with the franchise. This is better than the last quarter, and it is also to note that on a like-for-like basis, excluding renovation, because you remember that we have 63 stores that have been renovated, and some of them were only reopened at the very early stage of Q4.
We have an effect of -7.2% if we are purely out of renovation. You can also see the ongoing transformation of our network because we increased strongly the number of affiliates. As you can see, there is one opening, which is O'Neill in Belgium. There are two relocations, which are Barentin and Pau, so what we call the BHL, meaning the concept for the stores. We have seven transfers to affiliates, and we have 13 closings in our own network, while in the affiliate, we have two openings, Cognac and Redon, and these stores are very important in the development of this affiliate store business model. On the franchise store, it is a temporary closing, and it should be reopened in 2025. Let's jump into more detail.
If you look at this slide, you can see for sure that decoration is very high compared to what we have seen during the year, of course, because this is the quarter of Christmas, and Christmas holiday is very important for Maisons du Monde. All in all, the furniture is doing a little bit better than decoration, and remember that decoration for that quarter is better than what we have known during the year. So a little bit improvement with Christmas holiday. We can also see by channel that we are declining slightly the same compared to digital and stores, even if on like-for-like for stores we are a little bit better than that, and we have basically 66.2% on store and 23.9% online.
From a geographic point of view, we have some pockets of strength in Italy and Spain, which are markets that are recovering, also because they have known the transformation of stores a little bit earlier than France. And at the end, while the international was a little bit lower than France for the first three quarters, at the end of 2024, France and international have the same kind of dynamic, declining by 11% around, but at least on the same path. If we look at the financial, of course, it is a sales meeting, but if we look at the main topic we are following and we are sharing with you, so on the CapEx side, so we were supposed to be on 3%, and we know that we will be a little bit below 3%, so we are on track on that topic.
On working capital, we have also remembered that we are working on that, and we have reduced by almost one month our working capital. On cost saving, we had a target of 45 million EUR saving on 2024, and we achieved that. At the end of that, it enabled us to generate a positive free cash flow in 2024, which was clearly the big target of that year. One said, I leave the floor to François-Melchior de Polignac for 2025.
So next page, thank you. For 2025, so you will have understood that we are not counting on a dynamic environment, clearly. If you can go back to the page a little bit, thank you. Clearly, what we are counting on is our action plans and the positive signals that we see from parts of them.
There is one point which is close to my heart and which is not commented too much so far is the NPS. In fact, we have been registering record levels of NPS and a steady growth of this NPS throughout 2025 compared to 2024, although here we're talking about the December figures. It's key to us because, to be quite honest, when you are going through an in-depth transformation of the organization, you could expect the NPS to take some time to grow or to recover because sometimes it can also go a little bit down. So it's a very positive signal for us that all the elements we have been implementing, listening to customers and trying to reconnect with customers, have been seen and heard by our customers. So this is, of course, very encouraging for us.
In terms of other positive signals, what we see from the loyalty program is also very promising in as much as its engagement of customers is bringing some increase in frequency and baskets, and of course, we have now tested renovation through all different kinds and typologies of stores that we have, which allow us now to make the best enlightened decisions in terms of the speed and magnitude of the rollout that we will go on with in 2025. If I just give a little color on the bullet points that you have below, basically, you see on the left side rather that has to do with the commercial and brand initiatives, basically, you understand that we will continue to leverage and reinforce the brand and its connection with its markets. We are also going to capitalize on our omnichannel strategy.
You might have in mind that we changed the organization some months ago to bring together under one single commercial management, I would say, all our selling channels, and we see some potential improvements and synergies between the channels to become even more omnichannel than we used to be, and of course, the loyalty progra m is helping us in this respect as well. We believe that we are improving as well the distinctiveness of our product offer, and I will illustrate it in a second, but it's not only about distinctiveness of the product offer. You have in mind that we have been optimizing a level of offer and assortment that we have deemed a little bit too complex, though inspiring to our customers. I'm also happy to share with you that this collection will see the beginning of a new category, which is the bathroom items.
It's an important milestone for us because it's not only about optimizing the offer by making the existing categories more relevant and performant, but also by increasing our coverage of categories for which customers have expressed a distinctive goal and need, which is in that case the bathroom items, and of course, we'll leverage further on the loyalty program to build the long-term engagement of our customers. I could, of course, detail a lot more on the commercial client side, and that's a key part of it, but you also have in mind at the same time on the right side the further work that we are doing on, let's say, the financial and cash efficiency. We have been proving in the last two years that we are able to optimize our merchandise treasury, and we'll keep on in this direction, of course.
We are planning a lot of improvement in the supply chain as well. We also have announced recently, as you know, a reduction of our head office, which is an acceleration of the optimization of our organizations. We count on that not only to master costs, but also to increase agility and simplicity of all our processes, and of course, it will be a milestone to digest in the coming months, and we spoke about affiliation, of course. You have in mind the target that we set for the partnership share of our network, so we'll accelerate on affiliation and franchise moving forward in 2025.
So again, as a kind of conclusion at this level, I would say that we don't count on the environment because it remains adverse, most likely in the coming months in Europe and notably in France, but we remain confident in our ability to recover momentum and achieve the growth and drive profitability because of the key action plans that have been launched and on the roadmap that we stick to. And now, just to really conclude on some images rather than just on those comments and figures, you are all, of course, more than welcome to come to visit our showroom in the center of Paris. Please do not hesitate to ask for a guided tour. We'll be very happy to do that if you want to. And otherwise, just have a glimpse of the inspiration and variety of the offer that we are able to present our customers.
You can see here something which I believe is quite distinctive, which is the diversity of styles and inspirations that we are able to bring across different categories from the table accessories to the furniture and decoration, and from more classical styles to more urban and modern styles, and of course, indoor and outdoor, which is the diversity and variety of styles and inspiration for everybody that Maisons du Monde is all about. Thank you for listening to us, and we will just check now if there have been some written questions waiting for our answers.
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So we have some questions here. I'm not sure exactly which order they come, so I will take some of them as I see them.
So some questions about the renovations, two questions at least about the renovations. So on the renovations, as I told you, we now have covered all the different types of stores that we have in terms of countries, square meters, type of clients around the stores, and so forth. And now what we see is that is the stores where we have the most positive and promising results and where there is the biggest impact. Good question about how do we want to accelerate and what is the plan looking forward. So what we believe is that the most successful impact we can have and fastest impact is really on the commercial centers because, as I told you, results are very good, and it's locations where you see huge flows of customers. So that has a big impact in terms of brand promotion as well.
So in the coming months, we will be focusing on such kinds of stores to begin with. That's for one. Second, we'll see that we can further improve the return on investment on the renovations. So we are now in the process of reviewing our list of potential remodel stores, and this is something we'll be able to share with you in a couple of months when we update our plan moving forward in terms of store renovations. There was a question also linked to renovation, if I understand rightly, about the economic impact of such renovations. So what I would like to tell you on those ones. We're not going too much detail, but have in mind that apart from the commercial center that calls for a significant investment, but I'm calling significant investment still only a few hundred K by store.
Most other renovations have very limited budgets that are on average way below EUR 200,000 and very often way below EUR 50 million so as you can imagine, the return on investment is not that difficult to reach, especially as at the same time we have a slight improvement, so slight reduction of the inventory value in such stores, and there is no need to increase the worked hours. Indeed, the stronger visibility of customers for store associates and vice versa, and the simplicity of the merchandising could to some extent allow us to save some worked hours, but we decided to keep them for customer service, so the economic model goes together with the sales model for the store, and so whenever you get the level of upside of sales you want, it goes in parallel with the ROI and with the full profitability of the stores.
So, I will not give you today the rhythm of renovation for S1 and S2, and also because, as I mentioned before, we will have to digest the renewed organization at head office level. So, we'll probably give a pause to some extent to the teams that are many teams involved in the renovation programs also at head office level. Denis, if you want to take one question.
Okay. Let's see on the other question. Basically, we have some financial. As you know, it's a sales element, and yet the figures are not yet audited or fully audited. Our auditors are working currently, so it's very difficult to provide exact figures on that. But in order to give you some color, yes, Q4 was a little bit H2, basically was with some pressure on promotion, and that's linked for sure with a hit in the gross margin linked to that.
And it was a very high promotion model on that topic. On the underlying EBIT, either it is positive or not. Again, on that topic, it is not yet audited, and we could be either in a way or in the other way at the end. So on that topic, I will not be able to answer you, but we will be very close to zero at the end, probably. Regarding the guidance, we are living in a challenging environment, worse than anticipated a year ago, clearly, notably as a result of lack of visibility and weakening consumer confidence. We have not stood still, and we are taking necessary action to adapt for cost structure to consolidate that guidance. So that's the situation. On the plan, we have announced some days ago, you have the number of jobs that are concerned, so 91.
You can imagine the cost of that, the global wages for these HQ people, that should be around EUR 70,000. So you can do the math in order to add that. As you've seen, on that topic, it's far from all the cost savings we are planning to do and that we have done. So remember that we have done EUR 45 million in 2024, and we will come back for sure in one month with the full visibility for 2025, but we are targeting huge savings that are far beyond that PSE. Regarding the better economic on stores, of course, we are targeting the better economic on stores, not only on top line, but also on productivity and profitability. For this one, again, we are finalizing the closing, and we will be able to share with you more in the coming months. We have some questions around the covenant.
So globally, on the covenant, we have anticipated with our bank partner that have fully accepted to adapt the covenants. Again, the figures are not yet audited, but we should be very, very close to, not so far, I would say, from the free around that topic and far behind the new covenant negotiated.
There is, yeah, Florent's question on the GenB sales trend, price environment, margin, potential pressure with Black Friday success, and I guess also looking forward. So as this is not the financial result, I will not be maybe as explicit as you'd like to be. Let's say the agenda more or less is in the same line as what we've been seeing so far. But on the more global question about the margin levels, let me share with you a couple of thoughts.
First one, as you probably remember, we have been cleaning the assortment and inventories over the last now nearly 18 months, so this has brought us to make some specific investment, notably in 2023, but also some little bit of it in 2024, and basically, we are shifting progressively, let's say, our margin and sales balance with less hardcore promotions and older inventory liquidation, which have been fueling the sales to an extent, but also weighing on the margin from late 2023 until in the end, nearly the sales period of 2025.
At the same time, moving forward, a more balanced price offer with 3,000 permanent price cuts that we went through last year, and also an increase in our offer of, let's say, the P1 or entry prices so as to progressively go away from high promotion to less promotion, more balanced promotion, but with more balanced entry prices and prices from day one. So you could see a mix of those dynamics into the evolution of our margin and expect to see it in the coming months as well.
And I will just add one topic to what Denis was saying about the headquarters cost reduction. As Denis said, it's very important for us.
It's not only about the number of headcounts that is going to be reduced, but we really want also to leverage this opportunity to reinforce the agility and efficiency of our head office and thus to bring also a number of additional savings into the equation on top of the direct salaries of the people involved, so I can see that there has been no further question in the last minutes or so. It did take us some time to answer all the flow of incoming questions, so I guess we'll leave it another few seconds before wishing you a very good day.
All right, well, thank you to all of you. Have a good day, and we are speaking again in just over a month anyway.